fourth of july weekend, part one

as usual, we headed out to mems and teed's house for the fourth of july weekend. we had a lot of fun stuff planned, including an evening with some of our very dearest friends. i'm sure i've written about them before, but the brief explanation of our relationship is that ingrid and don have been my parents' closest friends for as long as i can remember. in fact, they met when my mother was eight months pregnant with me, so i have indeed known them my entire life. their son alec is one of my closest friends, and their daughter lucy is one of aunt marge's closest friends. our two families spent countless evenings together while we were growing up, having long dinners full of interesting conversation, culminating in some cutthroat games of pictionary. alec and his wife rachel now live in the DC area and have two sons, harry (five) and john (two and a half). (they weren't in town over the fourth, but we got to see them the following weekend). lucy has lived in italy for the past ten years. she is a painter and she has one son, vito, who is four.

so much for a brief explanation. anyways, on saturday night, we headed over to ingrid and don's house (bebe calls them "omi ingie" and "papi don") to visit with them and with lucy and vito. watching my daughter and lucy's son play together in the yard where alec, lucy, maggie and i played so often as children was unexpectedly moving.


bebe has recently reached the stage where she is very interested in older kids, and she was fascinated by vito.

lucy, aunt marge, uncle ben, looking on.

it's a big yard. bebe got right to work.

with some basketball breaks, of course.

battle helmets!



after a while, bebe and vito got down on the ground and started rolling around.

they somehow convinced the grandfathers to join them.

later in the evening, vito gave bebe a hard hat just like the one he was wearing. (josh totally blocked my shot here, but vito actually put it right on her head.)

she couldn't have been more excited.

_